Category Archives: Easy

I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing

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You know you want this....

Anyone else remember the Coke commercial that had that song in it? How many of you can still sing it word for word? Lol. As advertising goes, that one was classic.

 

I have been a fan of Coca-Cola for just about my whole life. Oh yeah, I cheated every once in a while and tried “that other brand” but I always came back to Coke. It was always a very brief, based on desperation sort of flirtation. The other colas seriously don’t measure up for me. I remember one day, my brother Steve and I were downtown (from Chicago originally remember) and there was a stand set up to do blind taste tests of Coke and ahem… THAT brand. We both tried it and Coke won with no problem.

So when Kara from Coca-Cola contacted me a while back and asked me if I would like to recreate one of their delicious chef recipes that they have up on
My Coke Rewards , I was totally thrilled. I had seen many recipes over the years using Coke as an ingredient, but to be honest, the idea always seemed strange to me. Not anymore. I won’t say that I will suddenly have up 400 recipes utilizing Coke, but you’d darn well better believe that I will recommend trying it in this one. Even though I put my own twist on this recipe, Chef G. Garvin is still my new hero when it comes to pork tenderloin.

So what have I made you ask? The original recipe was Pork Loin With Coca-Cola BBQ Sauce. That sounded good…all the ingredients (besides the Coke) were things I used in cooking anyway but I wanted to spin this a bit differently. And oh my, was this delicious. The first words out of my husbands mouth were “oh sh**, this is good!”. Compliments galore indeed:-P if you are a meat eater, you’ll love this. If you’re vegetarian or vegan, still try the BBQ sauce from this recipe. It is beyond amazing. Sweet, spicy, fruity, a little teeny bit tart. You can find the original recipe from Chef Garvin at the above link. Mine is different but the integrity of the original recipe is still the same. I added some pineapple chunks, some curry paste, used a mix of pineapple and orange juice and subbed red pepper flakes for the jalapenos and I seasoned the pork itself differently. So try his if that tickles your taste buds, mine if you want the spin off 🙂 His is Happy Days, mine is Laverne and Shirley 😛

Pork Loin With Coca-Cola BBQ Sauce

  • 2 1 pound trimmed pork tenderloins (mine were closer to 1.5 lbs each)
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons salt free Cajun seasoning
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons onion powder
  • 1 tablespoon brown sugar
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • Coca-Cola BBQ Sauce-
  • 2 tbsps canola oil
  • 2 tbsps minced garlic
  • 3/4 cup finely chopped onion
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons red pepper flakes
  • 1 finely chopped shallot
  • 1 tbsp red curry paste
  • 3 cups ketchup
  • 1/4 cup chicken stock
  • 1 cup orange-pineapple juice
  • 1/2 cup molasses
  • 1/3 cup Coca-Cola
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1 tbsp liquid smoke
  • 1 cup pineapple tidbits
  • To Serve-
  • Good quality hamburger buns
  • sliced sweet onion
  • sliced tomato
  • romaine lettuce
  1. Start by mixing all the seasoning for the pork. Rub the pork well with some olive oil then rub it all over with the seasoning mix.
  2. C’mon… rub better than that. Get your hands dirty…
  3. Place on a medium hot grill and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until the temp registers at about 135 degrees. At that point, start basting with the bbq sauce, rotating the meat to help caramelize the sauce and make it stick. Cook until the meat reaches an internal temp of 145 degrees, then remove from the grill and set aside to rest before slicing.
  4. The original recipe just has this being served with sauce on it and sauce on the side. I went a step further, sliced this up and served it on buns. It is oh so tender, oh so flavor filled
  5. For the BBQ Sauce-
  6. Add the canola oil to a medium saucepan. Add in the garlic, onions, shallots and curry paste. Saute until the onions are softened and tender.
  7. Add in the remaining ingredients except for the pineapple chunks. Simmer over medium low heat for about 20 minutes. Add in the pineapple pieces and simmer for another ten minutes, stirring frequently

Compensation was provided by Coca-Cola, but Coca-Cola is not a sponsor, administrator, or involved in any other way with this post. All opinions expressed are my own and not those of Coca-Cola.

We Gotseses TREES!!!

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Soft Frosted Orange Cookies

Some of you may remember that late last year my husband and I bought a house and land. We’re in our late 40’s and this is the first time (for all intents and purposes) that we’ve owned a home, so we’re loving it. You can see a photo of the house here . Is it fancy? Not in the least. Is it new? Nope; about 13 years old. But it’s ours and it came with ten acres of land; 3 cleared and 7 wooded which was one of the major reasons we wanted it.

So this Spring we’re having fun doing a lot of planting. My husband tilled up a large area for us to have as a garden and we’re planting trees. So far we have two different types of apple trees, 2 fig trees, a peach tree and a nectarine tree. I want to get a couple more apple trees, one more peach tree as well as 2 or so pear trees, some cherry trees and some nut trees. It’s hard to describe how it feels to see this house becoming OUR dream… OUR future. It’s pretty darn cool.

Unfortunately, we live too far north for citrus trees though I do eventually want to get some dwarf citrus trees to pot, leave out in Summer and bring in during the cold seasons. If anyone has those and has any recommendations for a good place to buy them, please let me know 🙂

But for now, when I want a citrus dessert, I have to do what those of us not in very sunny climes have to do…. go to the store and buy some fruit.

I wanted cookies recently but not chocolate ones. I know I know… close your mouth and stop looking so amazed. There IS life beyond chocolate. Not always a good life, but life nonetheless. I say this as I am nibbling on a Scharffen Berger Milk Chocolate Bar I splurged on. Go figure. Continue reading →

Chili Today Hot Tamale

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Lamb Chili. It's not baaaaaaddddd (hehe. I slay me)

C’mon, you know that old joke. You MUST know that old joke. You’re five years old (well, not now but think back that far which for some of you wasn’t long ago and for others (like me) was so far back that you recall riding on the backs of dinosaurs) and you go up to someone and ask them what the weather is like. They say “I don’t know; what’s the weather like?” You then reply, with all the wit your five year old sense of humor can muster, “It’s chili today and hot tamale!!!”. You then proceed to roll on the floor laughing so hard that you wet yourself and get put in the corner for an hour. Ok, so maybe that last part was just me. But it was funny darn it!!! Funny I say!!! Totally pee worthy.

Moving on 😛 I know some of you (though very few at this point) are still enjoying cool, if not actually cold, weather. And even if you’re not, if you’re anything like me, you agree with the idea that you do NOT have to save chili for Fall and Winter. I said that same thing when I put together
This Chili Recipe Here which is actually my all time favorite non beef chili. Go ahead; check it out. I’ll be here when you get back.

You back now? Didn’t that one look yummy?! It is; trust me. But the one I’m posting now could easily vie with it for first place on favorite non beef chili. This uses lamb, which I love enough that when I saw this recipe online (for the life of me, I’m not sure where I found it and the paper I have it on doesn’t have a web site listed and there are 9 gazillion variations of this so I’m not sure which I changed used.) I knew I had to try it. I’m one of those people that when I am eating a specific meat (or sweet for that matter) THAT’S my favorite. Roast chicken? Favorite. Replace it with roast duck? Favorite. Put a steak in front of me? Favorite. Lamb? Yep… favorite. You get my point. This chili is now my favorite! 😛 Continue reading →

I Like Taters Cause Taters Can Make You Mine…

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I like taters, specially when eaten with lots of wine!! Ok, so my revamping of song lyrics leaves something to be desired. Like talent. But in my defense the song “I like Dreamin'” has been floating in my head all day long. I had to use it SOMEHOW!

Yes, I know taters can’t really make you mine either. But if I make them for my husband, they make HIM mine. Again. Or still. Or something.

Making these particular potatoes can quite possibly make anyone yours. Think crispy potatoes, gooey cheese, green onions, more gooey cheese. Wouldn’t YOU be someone’s sweetheart for that? I would. So maybe I would be someone’s sweetheart for a ten pack of Twinkies, a few Kindle E-Books and two liter of Coke but then, I’m cheap that way.

I found the original recipe for these potatoes HERE . I knew that, being me, I would change the recipe somewhat but honestly I didn’t do a whole lot. I added a teaspoon of jarred diced jalapenos, some extra cheese (you know me. I ALWAYS use extra cheese) and some green onion in lieu of the regular onion.

You need to try these. Trust me. Just cause I eat Twinkies and drink wine spritzers made with flat Sprite and cheap wine doesn’t mean I don’t know good potatoes when I inhale them. Admittedly, the above sentence isn’t the best way to endorse myself but oh well… Continue reading →

Snickering Over Doodles

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Snickerdoodle Muffins. Yum!!

I think I’ve mentioned before that I was a weird kid haven’t I? Not that this comes as a surprise to any of you who read my blog.  I have to say though, I came by it honestly. It was all the fault of my brother and sister. They corrupted me. Yep, yep yep. All laid at their psychological doorsteps. There was the time they filled the washing machine with tons of soap and it overflowed everywhere. When confronted by our dad, they said that I did it. Hello?! I was so young I don’t really even remember this happening, it’s just one of those passed down family stories. Point being, if I was that small, how the heck did I reach the washer? But, dad bribed me to “tell the truth” with an offer of jello. I’m a sucker when it comes to jello so I fessed up. I’m pretty sure I didn’t get the jello.

That was just one of the many ways they warped my poor tender psyche. There were also words which have stuck with me to this day and still make the five year old stuck inside my feeble minded middle aged body giggle hysterically. Like the word doodle. To you and you and you it means a sort of random drawing right? I don’t want to know what it means to YOU, you sick puppy. 😛

Not to me though. Nope. Done been warped, I tell you. It’s all his fault *points to my brother and wonder if he sees this*. Doodle to me still brings up mental images of a coloring book I had as a child that, on the cover, told me, in gaily colored words, that one of the fun things to do inside was to “doodle”. And I giggled. My brother giggled. My sister giggled. I’m pretty sure the dog giggled. Because to us,  doodles were a certain part of the upper female anatomy. We were kids… thinking of that part made us giggle. Lots. How did the word doodle come to mean boobs… breasts… cleavage, knockers, hooters…well, you get the point. I have. No. Earthly. Idea. I need to ask my brother. He’s even older and more decrepit than I, so he may know how that word came to be the word for boobage in our admittedly strange household. Continue reading →

Blackberry, You Taste So Sweet

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Blackberry Lemonade Muffins

It’s become a challenge to find a video that will go with each blog post. Why do I do it you ask? Because I’m extremely strange first of all and also because once I start something. I become rather obsessive. 😀 This my friends, is why you get a really lame video with almost every post now hehe. I like to think of it as my being your doorway to new musical tastes. Or insanity. Whichever. You know you liked The Carrot Song.

I have a thing for berries also. I wait every year for them to show up fresh at stores for a decent price and not having the taste of…well… nothing at all. Out of season berries really suck donkey toes. So when I can’t get them, I use frozen. It’s not quite the same but it’s pretty darn close and it keeps me from going into “Lack of Berry Convulsions”, otherwise knows as LOBC. Don’t ask me how you pronounce that. Just roll with it cause you love me.

I like muffins. So does
this lovely lady who happens to be one of my favoriteist (yes, that too is now a word cause I said so) people.

Muffins are yummy. They can have all sorts of bad for you things in them (not that my muffin today does; just saying) and yet you can get away with eating 12 of them because they’re muffins. Not cupcakes, not cookies, but muffins. And if you add fruit in them, you then earned the right to call yourself the healthiest cook ever. Or something. Do that rolling with me thing again. Continue reading →

Carrots Are Yucky

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Really. They are. Would I lie to you? I love you all to death so I would never lie about something as important as the ickiness factor surrounding those orange…things.

I don’t like carrots (in case the above sentences didn’t clarify that). I will eat baby carrots if they are cooked almost to the point of mush and then covered in about 16 pounds of butter per carrot and salt. I will eat carrot cake. I mean c’mon, it has cream cheese frosting and is gooey and…well…it’s cake. I can forgive it for having carrots.

I’m also that person who, upon getting one of those bagged salad mixes, picks out every single carrot shred out of my bowl and throws it in my husbands serving. Raw carrots are even yuckier than cooked ones.

But… BUT I say! I like carrot cake. So when I saw a recipe for a quick bread that had a strong resemblance to carrot cake or would once I got through with it, I knew I had to make it. The original recipe is from Food And Wine. For the most part, I was true to the original but I seriously wanted it to be a bit more carrot cakeish but in quick bread form. That way if I wanted six slices for breakfast, I could honestly say that 1) I was NOT eating cake for breakfast and 2) it has carrots in it so it’s good for me. Right? So I added more spice to it, a TOUCH more oil (and I do mean just a little; just enough to increase the moistness w/out compromising the stability of the bread), raisins and the crowning touch of a cream cheese glaze.

This is good. Really good. I may or may not have eaten three slices already and scraped all the excess glaze out of the bowl with my tongue finger.

Don’t judge me.

Tender moist cake bread, stuffed full of raisins and sweet spices and a tangy sweet and creamy cream cheese glaze. And oh yeah, those orange things. What are they called again? Oh yeah… carrots.

Go buy some orange things and some cream cheese.

And you’re welcome. Continue reading →

Back Away From The Asparagus & No One Will Get Hurt

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Marinated Asparagus. The taste will "Stalk" you in your dreams. HA! I slay myself! (If you click on the photo, the dressing shows up better)

I was a weird kid. Yes, I know I’m also a weird adult but my point is that it started years ago. It was just a hobby then. Now I have it down to an art form. But moving on. I was a weird kid. I never turned up my nose at things like spinach, brussel sprouts or asparagus. On the contrary, I inhaled them. Which was great until the one time that asparagus spear got stuck up my nose upon inhaling…

What? You really expected me to make it through a paragraph without a bad one liner? You must be new to my blog.

But I really did love all of them. No inhaling involved *insert bad Bill Clinton joke here* Mind you, the spinach and asparagus I had a kid were always canned. Sad as it is, I didn’t have fresh of either until I was well into my 30’s. For the longest time, I preferred the canned versions because they were familiar. The fresh tasted funny to me. But they grew on me. No really. They did. Makes wearing a skirt interesting.

I’d lie and tell you that I’ll stop now but you’d know and I’d know that I was lying so why bother?

“It was the dawning of the Age of Asparagus, age of asparagus”

Ahem. Yeah. Again; moving on. Loved them, ate them, wore them. Ok, I think that catches us up now. Continue reading →

Bacon Makes Any Food Better

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Well, maybe not ice cream..or jello… or candy (sorry, chocolate bacon lovers) Yeah yeah, I know, there actually IS bacon ice cream and bacon candy but there are some things I just can NOT get behind. I am however still petitioning congress to make bacon, cheeses of all kinds, wine and chocolate part of the government supported food plans. For some reason whenever I call or write though, no one is ever in the office anymore. I can’t imagine why.

I’ve mentioned before that I love corn bread. I prefer it the southern way a la no or very little sugar. But I will eat it with sugar too so long as it’s not heavily sweetened. As the saying goes, if I want cake, I’ll eat cake. If I want cornbread, I’ll eat cornbread. Hold most of the sugar please.

You really have to forgo the sugar if you’re making a cornbread with add ins like this one. I added a couple of tablespoons to help with color but that’s it. This was based on Ina Gartens  corn muffin recipe and I have to say, even had I been making it plain, I couldn’t have brought myself to add the full cup of sugar she called for. Really? A full cup!?

But this way? Say yummy with me! C’mon… say it! SAY IT DARN IT OR NO RECIPE!!

Erhmmm, sorry. I’m calm now. Continue reading →

Who’s Ready For Spring?

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Not me. I want 5 feet of snow and a blizzard that buries our house!

Ok, ok, that’s not true. As much as I enjoy Winter, I’m ready for warmer weather. NOT the boiling hot “omg, my face is melting” hot that Summer brings here in Kentucky, but the warmth of Spring. Mind you, warm here can mean high 80’s unfortunately (we had had strange Summer like weather here the last few days; even had to use the a/c) but that’s neither here nor there.

I love the gentle breezes of Spring, the smell in the air, the blooming trees and flowers and the crickets and frogs singing to me.

Ok, enough waxing poetic. Let’s get to the food!

I also love the foods that come in Spring; the wonderfully fresh asparagus and spinach, the new berries that can’t be matched  by the hothouse ones or imported ones any other time of year. Plus the colors! All the foods are so bright and cheery looking to match the season. Well, except for liver… it’s nasty no matter what season it is. And Cheetos are bright and cheery even in the middle of Winter. Just sayin’.

One thing that most everyone uses more of in Spring is Lemon. I’m no exception. I love it no matter when or where but it adds a special brightness to already fantastic food in Spring. I use it on top of veggies, in compound butters for fish and chicken and of course in baked goods. This is ME, after all.

One thing I make every Christmas is thumbprint cookies. I was craving some today. But the normal ones, filled with jam, seem only fitting for Christmas. I’m not sure why, they just do. So I played around. That seems to be one of my usual sentences doesn’t it? Lol.

I made a normal thumbprint cookie with some minor variations but messed with the filling. I decided to go with lemon and white chocolate. Both seem Springy to me. I used
This recipe here

for the lemon curd recipe. It’s the one I always use for curd and always have some of in the fridge. For the white chocolate, I used some of the new

Philly White Chocolate Spread . I’m madly in love with that stuff. All three of the flavors are awesome.

These turned out great. Very Springish (yes, that too is now a word) and they would be perfect for an Easter buffet or brunch or after school snacks or dessert or swiped from the fridge late at night or dinner or as a reward for breathing in and out. So c’mon… go make some lemon curd and get to work.

Lemon White Chocolate Cheesecake Thumbprints

  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1/4 teaspoon butter flavoring (optional)
  • 1 tablespoon lemon zest
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 1/4 cup cornstarch
  • 1 1/2 cups flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 to 3/4 cup lemon curd
  • 1/2 cup Philadelphia White Chocolate Cream Cheese Spread
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease two cookie sheets.
  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
  3. Add in the egg, lemon juice & extracts. Beat well.
  4. In a small bowl, combine the dry ingredients, including the lemon zest. Mix well.
  5.  Dump the dry ingredients into the wet. Using a wooden spoon, mix well.
  6. Shape into about 1 inch balls and place on greased cookie sheets. Use your fingers or the handle of a wooden spoon to make a nice indentation in the cookies.
  7. Bake at 350 for about 9 minutes or until the edges of the cookies are light brown.
  8. Cool completely on wire rack. Do NOT attempt to add fillings until cool or they will melt and run off.
  9. Add a small dollop of the white chocolate cream cheese to each cookie, then top with another small dollop (about 1/2 teaspoon or so) of the lemon curd.
  10. Dust with powdered sugar. Store these in the fridge due to the cream cheese. That’s assuming there are any left to store.